Xamarin : The Next Big Thing in Mobile App Development.

March 9, 2016

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Since Microsoft announced a global collaboration with Xamarin at the beginning of this year, the mobile app development world took notice of the relatively anonymous kin of the popular mobile app development across platforms.

To the layman Xamarin is just another platform for developing apps in C#. If you ask a techie he’ll beam at  you before he goes on and on about how Xamarin has changed mobile app development and why is it the next big thing.  If you are remotely interested in mobile apps, read on, we are about to tell you why Xamarin!

The buzz word with Xamarin is shared code.

What exactly is shared code?

Let’s say you are building the same application across platforms, Android, iOS and Windows and you want to write the code just once, is it possible? Of course it is. That’s what most  mobile development platforms these days are trying to achieve. Increasing the re-usability of the code by adding native wrapper classes or native codes for integration with the native libraries is characteristic to any mobile app development platform. Xamarin claims that 75% of its code can be shared throughout different OS. If user interfaces are built with Xamarin.Forms, the shared code percentage could go well over 90%. Needless to say, this could be a huge time-saver!

It means that as a developer, your effort is reduced by a significant amount. It means that if you as a client are paying an app developer the cost of development goes down for you as well.

What Do All Products fall under Xamarin?

Xamarin. The platform, Xamarin. Form, Xamarin Studio, Xamarin. Mac, Xamarin for Visual Studio, Xamarin Test Cloud, Robo VM, and  .Net Mobility Scanner are all the products that are enlisted under Xamarin (now acquired by Microsoft)

.Net Mobility Scanner

Xamarin’s .Net Mobility Scanner lets developers see how much of their .NET code can run on other operating systems, specifically Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and Windows Store. It is a free Web-based service that uses Silverlight

The Xamarin Advantage for Enterprise Apps:

• Why Xamarin has become a favorite with the rise in enterprise app development is no surprise!
• Xamarin is supported by Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) providers. MBaaS systems provide mobile-optimized cloud backend system and enterprise backend connectors, making development work easier for enterprise mobile application development
• Kidozen, a major player in the MBaas market provides private and public cloud-based backend for mobile applications. It also provides enterprise backend connectors. KidoZen’s SDK is available on the Xamarin component store, allowing Xamarin-based mobile applications to connect with various backend systems, using a very small amount of code.
• SAP has collaborated with Xamarin , making  enterprise mobility for enterprises running SAP software accessible.
• Salesforce SDK is available for free on the Xamarin components store
• IBM has made available its MobileFirst SDK through the Xamarin component store.
• Microsoft Azure mobile service connectors are available for Xamarin, making it easier for enterprise mobile applications to store non-sensitive application data in the Azure cloud.
  

  App Types that you can make with Xamarin

  

  Finance, healthcare, enterprise, utility. Anything that you name can be built using Xamarin. Xamarin is infact the best of both worlds. The re-usability of HTML5 and the native code ability of java, javascript and Objective C are all covered in this one technology.

  For more on the Technology stay tuned. Our own developers are pretty keen to talk more on Xamarin and how it helps them build the awesome apps that they do! We are coming up with a sequel to this write up soon where we discuss the advantages of Xamarin over other platforms and the kind of apps that have been built using the platform.

  Tell us more about your experiences with Xamarin as a developer or a client in the comments  thread below.